Another thought here... I wonder if we really need a "wall of shame"
somewhere, listing IHVs that are both closed source, and which do not
provide binary drivers. (This is different from the usual suspects from
places like OpenBSD... they want open chip specs without NDA and open
source drivers... I think we're happy to accommodate binary drivers and
companies that are willing to work with NDA. I really really want to
call out the companies that have made it impossible for anyone to use
their parts on OpenSolaris, even with binaries developed under NDA.
Those companies that neither produce a suitable driver themselves, nor
provide the information to allow anyone else to write one, should be
boycotted. Broadcom, for example, has a plethora of chips, and many of
them are fairly open (the ethernet and crypto parts for example). But
their WLAN story is such a shame, that I wouldn't advocate purchasing
Broadcom parts even if they are supported. (Note that there are some
broadcom chipsets which suffer the same closedness problem. Note also
that Sun can't even get access to their wifi specs under NDA.)
Likewise, ATI has some parts that are supported, and now their parent
company is AMD. If I had a choice, I'd vote with my dollar and not buy
any more AMD platforms, since ATI has actually become *more* closed than
they were before AMD bought them. (If anyone from AMD is around to see
this, feel free to push this up the food chain!)
Yes, I really wish Nvidia's code was open. But at the end of the day,
they produce drivers for pretty much most operating systems, so I'm not
really sure how important it is to me that they are open source. I
certainly wouldn't choose ATI over Nvidia in this day. (Funny thing is,
ATI *used* to be fairly open... but I think Nvidia and Intel are eating
their lunch these days.)
-- Garrett
PS: This is my own opinion, and even though I work for Sun, doesn't
represent Sun's views. Just posting here on my own behalf.
James Cornell wrote:
> Michael Schuster wrote:
>
>> James Cornell wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Other good options include the last Thinkpad models made by IBM, the T60
>>> for example.
>>>
>> you need to take care - they come with ATI or Nvidia graphics. Guess
>> which I got ...
>>
>> Michael
>>
> Ouch. Gotcha. :(
> Can't really say much to fix this, since as Alan said they aren't doing
> much to help the situation, every vendor except Intel is remaining
> completely closed. I have a Thinkpad T30, which has an ATI Radeon 7500,
> which is for lack of a better word, slow junk. It's decent with Linux
> DRI, but on OpenSolaris it gets 1/4th the framerate. I've
> decommissioned it in the end partly because of this. Not being able to
> run DVD's decently is an issue, and I have a MacBook Pro which has
> little to no problems, but then again, it doesn't help to say this
> because many people are stuck using components from Broadcom and ATI.
>
> James
> _______________________________________________
> laptop-discuss mailing list
> laptop-discuss at opensolaris.org
>
